Hey all…finally finished putting together the video analysis of Ex Machina. You’ll note the quality is a bit better than past classes. I dug up an old iPhone and decided to use that instead of my aging white Macbook.
I also took the liberty of doing some fun editing and back and forth at the end between Chris and his monitor. Hopefully that will make the presentation clearer and more beneficial towards your understanding of Dramatica.
Thanks for your patience and have a great one!
I would like to know what you guys think the argument of this story is supposed to be, given the story form that you arrived at. Similar to this:
Would it be “In the movie Ex Machina the argument is being made that if you start being conscious of things yourself, you will perish and fail to overcome personal problems” or something like that? It doesn’t really seem like that? Not that I’m arguing against the analysis, but rather trying to figure out how to really think about the argument of the Grand Argument Story. Additionally, it’s possible that this is partially because of the relatively weak MC Throughline…?
I have a related issue with the Othello analysis. It says that the title character is a Changed Main Character, “Change has to do with the Main Character Resolve and indicates that the MC has adopted the MC Solution” and yet it says “If Othello had used his conscience he could have prevented the tragedy” implying that he did not adopt the solution. And if we were to phrase it like the above, it would be “In the play Othello the argument is being made that if you start forgoing an immediate pleasure or benefit because of future consequences, you will perish and fail to overcome personal problems” which doesn’t seem right either.
Or is this approach to looking at the argument not useful?
Hi Bob, hope you don’t mind me adding some thoughts. (I watched the analysis video, but wasn’t part of the analysis or anything.)
The fact that every other story point in that Othello analysis has so much detail, but the MC Solution only has that one sentence
If Othello had used his conscience he could have prevented the tragedy.
… makes me suspicious that the illustration of that one point is a bit lacking. I don’t remember Othello very well but I wonder if it’s like, he’s a character who starts with all this tension between his being moral / noble (MC Issue: Morality) and having a tendency to being easily tempted (MC Problem: Temptation). And those two things battle it out to the point where he can completely ignore his Conscience? So he embraces his Solution (ignoring one’s conscience), but not in a way that could overcome personal problems or solve the overall problems.
Personally I think those argument statements only make sense if you consider the Grand part of the Grand Argument Story – a complete story is only trying to argue something like that within the big context it sets up. I don’t think Star Wars argues that trusting something outside yourself is always the way to go, but that in a certain context it is. i.e. if you find yourself in a similar situation to Luke, give trust a try!
So maybe from that perspective, the Ex Machina argument statement makes more sense?
No, it’s a cool way to think about it. The problem with Ex Machina is that the Main Character Throughline is really dialed back. My guess would be something like:
Trying to intercede on the behalf of someone you know you can save will eventually make you painfully aware that you have no idea who that person really is.
As opposed to the Hamlet example above which used Main Character Resolve, Main Character Solution, Overall Story Outcome and Overall Story Judgment, this example used:
Remember that its not always Main Character Resolve leads to Story Outcome, you can also have a Story Outcome that leads to a Main Character Resolve. Melanie talked about it recently on her blog.
Thank you. Only 40 min. in and I’m want to join, “the protagonist’s goal is perfection!!” Even if I’m wrong, wouldn’t that be a goal of ‘Being’ ?
Back to the podcast …